Giants, indeed

No, we won’t be talking about dynasties. Not here, not today. Even the idea of an era of dominance in the making would border on the ungracious. Might even draw the wrath of the otherwise ebullient Giants coach Tom Coughlin.

Besides, wasn’t it around the time that the dynasty talk began in Foxboro and Boston that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady lost a bit of his magic and coach Bill Belichick no longer was such an undisputed genius?

The more fitting way to hail the New York Giants — the Super Bowl champion Giants, we mean, and isn’t that fun to say, again? — is to talk about their perseverance.

To point out that this team was just 9-7 in the regular season, that it needed every break imaginable just to qualify for the playoffs, no longer is to smack of a naysayer. It’s instead to marvel at how good the Giants were when it counted. It’s a perfect segue, its own version of a perfect pass pattern, to assessing the mastery of Eli Manning when time is of the essence.

Two points down? Three minutes, 46 seconds to play?

Just where we wanted to be — right, Giants fans?

Let’s go to the tape, the one that can satisfy a football fix until training camp begins next summer at, we sure hope, the University at Albany.

An utterly amazing 38-yard pass to Mario Manningham, this year’s David Tyree.

Then, with a minute left, Ahmad Bradshaw almost walking into the end zone with the touchdown that the New England Patriots were all too happy to have him score.

They had their own script, of Mr. Brady winning the game in the final seconds.

But let’s just say the Giants’ defense is better than that.

Two Super Bowls in four years, then. The improbable one in 2008, just as the country was heading into an economic cataclysm. Now this one — another, if milder, upset over the same team, just as there are early signs of hope that the truly bad days really are in the past.

There are worse metaphors than the Giants and their perseverance. Just ask Mr. Coughlin.

Two months ago, he was as good as headed for the unemployment line. Yet here he is now, with almost as many Super Bowl rings as Mr. Belichick. The man from the hardscrabble beginnings in upstate New York can smile, after all. And so can we all.